Porosity and Otherwise Lousy Welds

[sdef]

Following is a link I stumbled across when researching my porosity problem earlier this year. I checked each item that met my circumstances, until out of near desperation I replaced the wire- which fixed my problem. 22 possible causes of weld metal porosity - TheFabricator.com

 

[Shield Arc]

Any of you guys ever run into this problem? Years ago I was welding 24-inch pipe to 2-inch thick plate for a project up in Prudhoe Bay. These were columns for a building. Contractor drilled holes in the ice, placed these pipe in the hole, and filled the hole with water.
For the life of me I could not stop the worm tracking. Every welder in the crew could do no better. Come to find out when the kid unloaded the pallet of wire from the truck, he dropped the pallet of wire off the forks of the fork lift. Broke the flux on the wire.
There are other reasons dual shield will worm track, most of the time the wire has picked up moisture, and needs to be dried out.

 

[RickeyS]

Shield that is pretty weird there. The only thing I could think of there was the metal would not reach temperature for welding because of the cold weather. I have received bad flux core before in the old days when we all considered flux junk. Flux sure has come a long way in the last 20 years.

 

[Sodo]

Ya try to do your best job welding good ole' 2" thick and some kid screws it up. Lesson Learned! Danged worm tracks!

 

[Shield Arc]

Rickey ESAB has a good article on worm tracks.
Worm Tracks - Causes and Cures

 

[Mysfyt]

Any of you guys ever run into this problem? Years ago I was welding 24-inch pipe to 2-inch thick plate for a project up in Prudhoe Bay. These were columns for a building. Contractor drilled holes in the ice, placed these pipe in the hole, and filled the hole with water.
For the life of me I could not stop the worm tracking. Every welder in the crew could do no better. Come to find out when the kid unloaded the pallet of wire from the truck, he dropped the pallet of wire off the forks of the fork lift. Broke the flux on the wire.

There are other reasons dual shield will worm track, most of the time the wire has picked up moisture, and needs to be dried out.

Shield, I had this problem several times and it was always due to moisture in the wire. Have you ever successfully dried a spool of wire to where it stopped worming? I tried drying a spool in an oven for an hour at 250* but it didn't help much. Last time I just junked the spool and grabbed a new one---end of problem.

 

[Shield Arc]

Have you ever successfully dried a spool of wire to where it stopped worming?

I've never done it my self. On the job you just grab another spool of wire.
I thought I had a Lincoln procedure for drying dual shield wire book marked, but can't find it right now.

 

[Arc weld]

For the OP, where do you get the 24 volts and 500"/minute from? Turn everything down and just twist your side to side while using a slight pushing angle and about 3/8" stick out.